RILF alert... Guess the number of Chinese-made tires recalled last year, and win a date with America’s hottest government regulator, NHTSA administrator Nicole Nason.

Winner: Proving that Toyota Priuses are indeed quicker than miniature donkeys, a sheriff’s deputy in Orange County, California, clocked a Prius on July 4 at over 100 mph. “One hundred and five, actually,” said OC sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino. Hammering the car (and hammered, apparently) was none other than Albert Gore III, son of the former presidential candidate and ranking greenhouse-gas gasbag. Little Al was booked on suspicion of drug possession.

Losers: Sadly, no pictures exist of the cops cuffing Michael Francis Wiley, 40, who slipped a high-speed police pursuit in New Port Richey, Florida, in a Ford Explorer but was later caught. Wiley lost both arms and one leg in an electrical accident at age 13 and is no stranger to the clink, having served time before for a 120-mph police chase and for—get this—kicking an officer. Meanwhile, Gregory Daniels, 48, was nabbed by police in Pomona, California, when his prosthetic leg fell off while fleeing the scene of an ATM heist. Daniels and an accomplice had been trying to pull a 1500-pound ATM from a market with a pickup truck when the fuzz intervened.

Winner: The root-beer-brown 1963 Ferrari 250 Berlinetta Lusso sold by Christie’s at its annual Pebble Beach auction in August might have gone for perhaps $500,000 had it not been owned by the late actor Steve McQueen. As it was, seller Mike Regalia of Thousand Oaks, California, who purchased the Lusso in 1997 for less than $100,000 and restored it to concours condition, watched the bidding reach $2.31 million before the gavel fell. The swell who paid the estimated $1.8 million premium for the McQueen provenance—by all accounts, the big Ferrari, given to the actor by his first wife, Neile Adams, was not his favorite car—remains anonymous.

Losers: Old Glory’s standing in Formula 1 sank eerily close to pig slop this year. First, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, stating that the U.S. is “not vital” to the series, announced the end of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway round after eight underattended, money-losing races at the Brickyard since 2000. Yes, we’re counting the 2005 tire fiasco as a race. It was later determined that Ecclestone had contributed absolutely nothing to the gross national product while staying in Indianapolis.

Also, Scott Speed, the only American racing in F1 and the 2002 Red Bull F1 Driver Search winner, was cut from the Scuderia Toro Rosso, based in Faenza, Italy. Speed’s trip to the woodpile occurred in August, shortly after he crashed out of the rain-deluged European Grand Prix and had a subsequent garage imbroglio with team owners Franz Tost and Gerhard Berger. In the squabble, said Speed, Tost “grabbed me from the front of my shirt, jerked me around, ripping a little bit of my fire suit, and pushed me against the wall.” Scuderia Toro Rosso’s press release, translated from the original Italian, stated only that “the brother he no canna drive.”